Peeve Farm

g r o t t o 1 1

Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets

Brian Tiemann
Silicon Valley-based purveyor of a confusing mixture of Apple punditry and political bile.

btman at grotto11 dot com

Read These Too:

InstaPundit
USS Clueless
James Lileks
Little Green Footballs
As the Apple Turns
Entropicana
Cold Fury
Capitalist Lion
Red Letter Day
Eric S. Raymond
Tal G in Jerusalem
Secular Islam
Aziz Poonawalla
Corsair the Rational Pirate
.clue
Ravishing Light
Rosenblog
Cartago Delenda Est

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Tuesday, January 11, 2005
14:54 - Stocking stuffers	(top)
More so than any other Stevenote that I can remember, this one has launched a line of products that are all aimed squarely at those people who would normally pass up Apple products because of their price. Usually a keynote is followed by a spate of people placing preorders for the new $3000 Power Macs or the new $500 iPods�high-end products with prices full of zeroes. I would usually watch the forums going nuts as the speech unfolded, with people every few posts mentioning just having emitted another couple of large into Steve's coffers for the privilege of having a preorder slot on a product that wouldn't ship for another three months, and I would wonder (even as I joined the throngs, myself, on occasion) just how many people could possibly be prepared to jump at such announcements on a high-rolling lark. This time, though, is different. All the products are a) cheap, b) small, c) available now (or within a fortnight), and d) cheap. We've got: Mac mini, at $500-600 (plus extra for AirPort, SuperDrive, Bluetooth, etc), small enough not just to tuck under your arm for an easy trundle to the mall, but almost small enough to fit in your pocket, for Pete's sake iPod shuffle, at $99 for 512MB or $149 for 1GB�so small it'd be dwarfed by any standard headphones, and sticks right into your USB port like a keychain drive iLife '05, at $79, which is either the same price as before or a hike from $50 (I can't remember)�not as exciting an update as I'd hoped, but definitely worth the price Ub iWork, also $79�a price so low as to seem subsidized (Keynote until now, on its own, was $99). And that's to say nothing of all the iPod accessories, Mac mini accessories, and other random little pieces of flair that can be had for $50 and less. Of all these announcements, the Mac mini is the most expensive, starting at less than five Benjamins, less than an iPod photo. And if the bare specs don't thrill, the photos are hard to even believe, let alone argue with; this thing makes the Cube look like one of those 40's women standing on a chair, hiking up her skirts, while a mouse scurries underneath. You can stack like seven of these in the space occupied by a generic AT case, and at a cost comparable to a high-end PC or G5, at that. Clustering, anyone? Development box? Insta-server? (The graphics are a bit disappointing; I wasn't expecting a great deal, considering what kind of machine this is, but a Radeon 9200 isn't even on the list of supported cards for CoreImage. It's the same chipset that's shipping with the current iBooks. I'm not sure what kind of gaming machine the Mac mini would make; I think one would have to test-drive it first-hand to know for sure. How does the 9200 compare to the GeForce 5200? Anyone know?) Perhaps uniquely among Stevenotes in recent memory, a guy could sweep the entire lineup of new goodies into a shopping cart for less than a grand. If this set of announcements had happened right before Christmas, I can tell you that my shopping (and others' for me) would have been eeeeeasyyyy... I mean, what could be a more perfect stocking-stuffer for the not-so-blingified family, those not prepared to be buying each other $400 music players, than the iPod shuffle? This thing will eat the whole rest of the market. If there's any doubt to be had, too�well, the online Apple Store has been ground to a halt for longer and more severely than I can remember after any past Stevenote. I think they're hitting one hell of a sweet spot in the market; assuming today's product lineup carries any margins at all, Apple just called the table and is now about to sweep in the whole pile. We'll see how things go, but I've got good vibes from today. UPDATE: Chris M. says: The first thought I had: "I have a hard drive to backup my Powerbook. This Mac mini is a backup computer." I think a lot of people who already have Macs will get one for that reason. It's fine to have backup, but what good is it really if you're under a deadline and your CPU board just died? The Mac mini doesn't cost all that much more than a hard drive. I think people will be finding all kinds of uses for this thing. UPDATE: It can add up, though. If you want to hook the Mac mini up to an HDTV, you're going to want to get a DVI cable, and those can be pretty insanely pricey...